Road to ruins: how I discovered the magic of archaeology

26.02.2024 - 12:05 / theguardian.com

When I was a teenager, I watched a TV documentary about a frozen human body that had been discovered at the summit of Mount Ampato in Peru. Dubbed “Juanita” or the Incan ice mummy, this girl had been a human sacrifice, killed in about 1450 at the age of 14 or so – the same age I was. Her body had mummified, preserved in the permafrost, which meant her clothes, her hair, even her stomach, containing her last meal, were all still intact.

Using a battery of scientific techniques, as well as historical and anthropological knowledge, the anthropologist-archaeologist-mountaineers who discovered Juanita were able to unpick the story of her final months, weeks and hours. I was astounded to learn that discovering and explaining such mysteries could be an actual job. Anthropology and archaeology, and the challenge of making the strange familiar, and the familiar strange, had a hold on me.

To prepare for university interviews, I found an archaeological dig in Cheshire that was willing to let me and my friend Helen camp for the week and help out. There was a Portaloo, a lumpy field for camping and a “mess tent” with chairs, tables and a limitless supply of hot tea served in brown-stained mugs. The professional archaeologists were the coolest people I’d ever met. They looked more hobo than emeritus professor, but it was clear they were intellectual and scientific heavyweights, piecing together the story of a complex site that spanned thousands of years of human activity.

I helped excavate the foundations of a medieval chapel, and the skeletons that had been buried around it. To my untrained eye, there were no obvious traces above ground – it was just a grassy field. But it had always been known as Chapel Field, and generations of farmers had avoided ploughing the area for fear of throwing up large blocks of stone.

To the archaeologists, who could read the landscape in a way I couldn’t, its history was glaringly apparent. I helped excavate a tall, middle-aged male skeleton. The bones were robust, and he had probably been part of the local farming community who used the chapel in the 1300s. He’d broken one of his fingers at some point and it had healed crooked. It seemed such an intimate and personal detail of someone’s life from many centuries ago. It was a reminder that this wasn’t just a skeleton, but a person.

Archaeology is the study of the human past through material remains – from buildings, tools and craftwork to burial sites and human bodies. Often the things archaeologists discover are items that were thrown away or lost or buried. This “rubbish” tells the story of ancient lives.

Archaeologists can even study the preserved plaque on ancient teeth and the poo at the bottom of privies to see what people ate.